Category: pencil

A portrait of a friend’s grandbaby, anonymized to protect the innocent! I still love graphite as a main medium. It’s so malleable that shading is pure fun. Of course, it comes along with it’s smudging capabilities which end up in unwanted places — nothing a coat of paint can’t fix! This will go into the upcoming Pro Arts East Bay Open Studio, June 6&7, and 13&14. http://www.proartsgallery.org/ebos/

I drew this from a photo in my mother’s photo album. He was my maternal great-grandfather, here, as a young man in the military, returned from what were called then “the Indian Wars”. Eventually he was a Colonel, but this may have been before that. His promotion papers were signed by Roosevelt.

These dogs have such wonderful wrinkles, luscious almost, like a rose in furry form. Since my sketching group has a side project of filling a small drawing book with animals, I thought I’d try a Sharpei. This is not a live sketch since I don’t know any actual Sharpei, so I drew this from a photo. I don’t know if it’s the paper, but the pencils seemed especially unwieldy tonight, and the difference between the 4H and the 2H was more dramatic than usual. Maybe it’s because of the moisture (it’s raining) in the air.

“I am too old to die young, and too young to grow up.” — He said this a week before he died. I thought he was a great complement to Gene Wilder in Young Frankenstein, a fun movie. This was made using 5 pencils, here’s the progression: http://youtu.be/g5JvmYP4kec

The medium was way too small for such a challenging face, at 5×7 inches, and the actual sketch ended up 3.5 x 4 inches. I’d better keep my pencils sharp next time! Buffy Sainte-Marie, probably in the last 7 years…